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Home Power is what you want to look at.

Yea, I was going to mention it but not wanting to repeat it I found your post when I searched. I've been reading "Home Power" for years, along with "Solar Today" and "Backwoods Home".

Falcon

Ethanol is proven as a fuel. Brazil has proven ethanol made from sugarcane is feasible. Switchgrass however is a better raw material than sugarcane.

Windmills turned out to be bird-blenders are useless with still air.

Older technology windmills, with their faster blades, are a danger to birds however today's slower spinning wind gennies are safer.

The problem is that solar, wind, and biofuels are actually not half bad for "peak" load, but most folks can't tell the difference between base and peak load.

Many people are able to live comfortably Off the Grid with solar and/or wind gennies. "Homepower and Solar Today show how people do it.

Falcon

Speak to a solar installer who has experience with battery backed systems and you will be told not to discharge below 50%

What I've heard is that battery banks should be oversized by 20%. An "extra" couple of batteries won't add much to the cost of a system.

Someone who lives off-grid and ignores their battery bank is in big trouble.

I agree, that's why most people should inter tie into the power system and not use batteries, it's also why most shouldn't use a composting toilet.

you might want to pick up a copy of HomePower magazine

Oh, I read "Homepower" along with "Backwoods Home", "Solar Today", and others.

Falcon

Energy effeciency is a far better, cheaper, and more effective route than building nuke plants.

Despite what Cheney says efficiency is all three of these, better, cheaper, and more effective than bulding not just nuclear power plants but any power plant. I want to build a home Off the Grid and build a hybrid energy system of solar PVs and wind gennies, generators. First step though is building it as energy efficient as possible. Home Power is a good magazine with articles showing just how this can be done. Solar Today also has good articles on designing buildings and energy systems.

Would be a combination of renewables, and algae biomass driven "Air Blown Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle" power plants.

Better probably is using algae to produce hydrogen.

Falcon

The first problem is that the CFLs only last 6 to 12 months in my house. I suppose I have pretty poor power, since I live in the country, but the incandescents seem to handle it much better. This failure rate adds significantly to the cost of CFLs, and makes mockery of those little marketing charts that show that CFLs last 7 times as long as incandescents.

There must be a problem with your wiring or power, I've been using CFLs for more than 15 years and in that tyme I've only replaced two of them when they burned out. The first was several years ago and the second a few months ago. Looking at my lights now I see I need to replace a third one, and I have 12 CFLs I use.

Even the new "instant-on" CFL's are not as fast as I am.

That's one of the two problems I've run into with CFLs, some take some minutes to fully come on. The other problem is in how CFLs affect photo shots.

I now feel that the solution is to move to individually generated solar or wind power. If I want to use more power, I obtain more solar panels. That way, any limitations are self-imposed, and the State does not have to tell me what kind of light bulbs I can or can't buy.

In a way I agree, I was designing a home I eventually wanted to build that was totally energy selfsufficient. Two of my fav mags are Homepower and Solar Today . I also think government, whether local, state, or national shouldn't be banning anything. However they can take steps to encourage energy efficiency.

Falcon

This will need quite a few nuclear reactors, solar panels + most of us will go to work by bicycle.

More nuclear power plants aren't really needed, as it is now there are techniques that will reduce the use of fossil fuels. A simple change in light bulbs reduces the electricity used in building. All of my bulbs are cfls, compact florence lights, that use 1/4 the power and provides the same amount of light as a regular incandescent light, of course the light from them has a different effect on film than incandescent lights. New appliances are also more energy efficient and can be made even more so. For instance look at refrigerators and freezers. On most the compressor and motor is in the back on the bottom. However both compressors and motors create heat and heat rises, so when they operate the heat goes through what is being cooled thus requiring more energy to be used. Some companies, like Sunfrost manufacture refrigerators and freezers with the compressor and motors on top, so they are more energy efficient. More energy efficient tips can be picked up through magazines like Solar Today , Home Power , and Natural Home and Garden as well as several others. Those who live off the grid by generating the power they use use these techniques as well as others. Many other things can be done commercially and industrially to reduce power needs as well. Natural Capitalism documents case studies of how different businesses have reduced their energy as well as raw material needs.

Falcon

I have been impressed with the LED lights over florescent or incandescent. The subdued lighting is fine with me and the energy consumption / bulb longevity is the best part. When my wife and I move (build a house), we will go 100% LED.

Currently I use CFLs, Compact Fluorescent Lights, 12 and 15 watt bulbs that produce as much light as 60 and 75 watt incandecent or "regular" bulbs and last up to several tymes longer. But LED lights bulbs I found out about a few months back use much less energy and last a lot longer than even CFLs. I'd like to, and am working on plans to, build my own home and when I do I want to be off the grid, probably powered by solarand wind genies. Or maybe fuel cells. So I'll be using LED lights myself.

Falcon

Wouldn't it be smarter to cover the buildings with solar panels, use that to power half the building and cut down of the amount of smog created by the power plants instead? Your car puts out NOTHING compared to a 250Mw coal plant.

Actually from what I read, I think one place might of been in HomePower mag and/or Solar Today mag , was that vehicles are the single biggest contributers to manmade greenhouse gases. A simple remedy for this though is Biodiesel . Without modification diesel engines can run on biodiesel. Actually Rudolph Diesel the designer of the diesel engine designed it to run on most any vegetable oil. And because the plants used to make the oil soak up carbon dioxide they are carbon neutral. It's not so much how much one vehicle puts out as it is the total of all vehicles.

However more building should include solar power in their design, active and passive. One way as you've stated is pv panels. Another way is a thin film that's being developed that can be applied to windows and the sides of building to generate solar power. Another method of power generation are wind genies, wind generators.

Falcon

1. Batteries suck. Flat out they are boxes of acid and lead. Read any of the solar energy magazines and you will find huge articles discussing battery safety.

Yeap, I read some of them, Home Power, Solar Today, Backwoodshome and Mother Earth News. Though there are problems with batteries they are getting better.

2. Generators are not green! You would want your Generator to be your last choice. Grid power will be cheaper and cleaner than what you will get from a generator.

That's about the size of it, backup genies should be the last thing as long as ac is available. But there's a growing movement of people moving off the grid, and depending on how far powerlines would need to be run it could be cheaper to have a totally self sufficient power supply with a genie backup.

3. What about cooling. Ac sucks a HUGE amount of power. If you are someplace with a lot of sunshine odds are pretty good you will need a lot of cooling.

Passive solar design can help with heating and cooling as can other techniques.

Falcon

Solar power, wind genies, and alternative sources of power aren't cheap up front but over the long term they are cheaper. Depending on the system configuration a system can pay for itself in 7 years, thereafter power is "free". Some good websites are:

• Home Power
• Solar Today
• CREST

Falcon

Subscribe to Home Power

This is the best idea in the list. Another good mag to subscribe to is "Solar Today".

• "Home Power"
• "Solar Today"

  Falcon

By the way, if it really takes an individual three months to research the purchase of photovoltaics, you'd be doing everyone a service if you shared that research concisely so that the rest of us can spend 5 minutes getting caught up.

Here's two good websites you can find out more, Home Power and Solar Today

Try this:

Solar Electric Systems - Perhaps what the home-scale renewable energy (RE) world needs most are ways to introduce people to RE technologies and the gizmos that make it possible. After all, even the best ideas aren't embraced until they are explained in simple terms. So whether you are the rookie who wants to understand how solar-electric systems work, or that better describes your spouse, friend, or prospective customer, this article explains the guts and bolts of the three most common options... Falcon